July 18, 2010

Biden Blames Republicans For Lack of Stimulus

After President Barack Obama complained about Republicans blocking supposedly crucial recovery measures in Congress and alleged that they were making a stand "on the backs of the unemployed," Vice President Joe Biden appeared on ABC's This Week on Sunday to add insult to injury.

According to Vice President Biden, the Recovery Act, which is worth some $787 billion of stimulus funding, was sized down under pressure from moderate Republicans whose support was deemed necessary to enact it. "I think it would have been bigger," he said. "In fact, what we offered was slightly bigger than that."

Just how much bigger Biden wouldn't say. Ultimately the Democrats managed to get just three Republican votes on their Recovery Act. This didn't stop several GOP legislators from scrambling for stimulus money for their states once it was law, of course.

Biden was responding to criticism that the administration's so-called stimulus package has, so far, yielded little result. He boasted that so many as three millions jobs may have been "saved" because of it and reminded listeners that it were the Republicans who had let Wall Street "run wild." So not only did they create the problem, for according to Democrats, it was private banks and their "greed," not the gargantuan semigovernment entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac nor the Federal Reserve and the historically low interest rates it set, which inflated the housing bubble; now Republicans are blamed for scraping a few pennies on the stimulus as well.

In spite of the billions of dollars already thrust into the national economy by this government, millions of Americans are jobless while signs of recovery are scarce. If only Republicans had been a little less frugal, would all be right today? Probably not.

The vice president further claimed that many Americans, including experts, "don't even know" what's in the administration's signature legislative accomplishments, among them its health care bill and financial reform. Because they don't, he said, Democrats are currently polling poorly, but he expects them to "shock" the nation come November when the midterm elections for Congress are due.